Two Views on Women in Ministry

Western societies have been largely egalitarian for roughly thirty years; young adults coming to Christ are often shocked to discover that the church is not necessarily an “equal opportunity” employer.

Many in our society today find no reason for prohibiting sexual relations outside of marriage among consenting adults, but that does not eradicate all the biblical prohibitions of fornication and adultery.

First Corinthians 14:33–38 Unless we assume Paul gratuitously contradicted himself in the space of three chapters, however we account for this passage, we cannot take it to mean Paul was telling women never to utter a word in church!114 What then did he mean by “silencing” the women? At least five main options have been suggested. I will treat them

Second, this observation raises immediately the issue of the parallelism between the nineteenth-century debate on slavery and the current debate on gender roles.

My own view is that we look for all the support we can find, inside or outside the Bible, for any of its commands, but we are still bound to obey them, whether or not irrefutable reasons can be given.

One of the best and most even-handed presentations of key developments bearing on women in ministry over the nearly twenty centuries of Christianity’s existence is Ruth A. Tucker’s and Walter Liefeld’s Daughters of the Church: Women and Ministry from New Testament Times to the Present (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987).

Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce includes strikingly equal treatment of men and women (Matt. 5:32; Mark 10:11–12) in a culture with a clear double standard for the genders with respect to both institutions.

Nor is it plausible to say this verse highlights Eve’s ignorance of God’s command, and then to conclude the women of Ephesus are prohibited from teaching because of a lack of education.

It is beyond dispute that the early church for several centuries had deaconesses (see above, p. 148);